McConnell, while baffled at Trump’s penchant for internecine attacks, is a ruthless pragmatist and has given no overt indication that he plans to seek more drastic conflict. Despite his private battles with Trump, McConnell has sent reassuring signals with his public conduct: On Monday, he appeared in Louisville, Kentucky, with Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, for a discussion of tax policy.

“Long said the only weapon he had was a can of spray paint that a white supremacist threw at him earlier, so he took a lighter to the spray paint and turned it into a flame thrower. And a photographer snapped the photo.

But inside of every photograph there’s an untold story. If you look closely at Long’s picture, there’s an elderly white man standing in between Long and his friend. The unknown man was part of the counterprotests too, but was afraid, and Long and his friends were trying to protect him. Even though, Long says, those who were paid to protect the residents of Charlottesville were doing just the opposite.”

Kuttner also noted that Bannon, as media-savvy a person as there is in that White House, didn’t even bring up the issue of whether or not the call was on the record.

Was that an oversight? It seemed unlikely, given that exactly such an impromptu on-the-record phone call just got Anthony Scaramucci guillotined.

I reached out to Kuttner and asked what he thought.

“I honestly think he messed up and forgot to put the conversation off the record, and treated it as a candid strategy talk with a comrade,” Kuttner said. “It came across as part candid strategy session and part stream of consciousness.”